Recently, leading industry research firm, Gartner, examined the most
critical capabilities that enterprises should consider when looking to
develop their next generation IP telephony in their report "Critical
Capabilities for Corporate Telephony."(1) "The primary critical
capabilities organizations should consider are architecture, scalability,
high availability, and UC integration capability," said Jay Lassman,
Research Director at Gartner in the report. "It is important to look for
solutions that support both centralized and distributed enterprise
architecture, scale in a cost effective manner, provide a high level of
system reliability and uptime, and provide interoperability between
telephone systems and UC applications."

CallXpress, a solution that provides voice communications to over 250
telephony systems aligns with these primary critical factors that are
important to building next generation corporate telephony. "The critical
capabilities that Gartner has identified are also the core framework of the
CallXpress 8 platform," said Tom Minifie, AVST Chief Technology Officer.

CallXpress 8.1 delivers the highest availability to meet organizations'
disaster recovery initiatives. The new release enhances its uninterrupted
hot standby option with a new tertiary System Server. The new architecture
provides support for a redundant solution at an alternate location thereby
assuring a speedy recovery in the event of a local disaster.

In addition to high availability options, CallXpress allows organizations
to consolidate and centralize their voicemail system to improve business
efficiency while enhancing the bottom line. With scalability of up to 384
ports, CallXpress supports a centralized, distributed or mixed telephony
infrastructure. Customers have the ability to centralize messaging and call
processing applications using their existing voice or data networks by
deploying AVST's survivable Call Server technology or SIP gateways.

CallXpress 8.1 is highly interoperable. With over 250 TDM and IP
integrations and the ability to support multiple switches, CallXpress
aligns with other critical capabilities, specifically the importance to
invest in solutions that are interoperable. The newest release of
CallXpress extends AVST's leadership position by offering the broadest
range of IP and TDM integrations, now with support for Aastra Pointspan®
and expanded support for Dialogic® Media Gateways (DMG). "With slightly
more than twenty percent of the traditional TDM customers migrated to IP,
AVST ensures that CallXpress continues to interoperate into a mix of
multiple TDM and IP-PBX solutions," noted Minifie. "Our focus is to
continue to develop Unified Communications solutions that protect and
extend organizations' investments in current and future communications
infrastructures."

-- Lotus® Notes® 8.5 support for unified messaging users
-- Enhanced unified messaging for IMAP to support Google Gmail and other
secure IMAP e-mail servers and services
-- UCConnect™, a Microsoft® .NET development environment used to
create custom applications
-- Windows® 7 Professional support for end-user and administrative client
applications

CallXpress 8.1 is currently in field trial and scheduled for general
availability in the next 90 days through AVST's established reseller
channels. CallXpress is a powerful suite of Unified Communications
applications, including advanced call processing, voicemail, unified
messaging, personal assistant,
fax,
speech, and notification capabilities to help businesses become more productive.
For more information about AVST's products, visit the company's website at
www.avst.com.

About AVST

Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, Inc. (AVST) is a leading developer of
communications solutions with over 10 million users that rely on its
products and services to maximize their productivity. With nearly 30 years
of innovation excellence, AVST is focused on delivering solutions that
increase user and business productivity. Its flagship Unified
Communications platform, CallXpress®, offers unprecedented
interoperability and delivers advanced call processing, voicemail, unified messaging, personal assistant, fax,
speech and notification capabilities. With CallXpress, an organization
can protect and extend its existing data and telephony infrastructure
investment -- now and into the future.

Headquartered in Orange County, Calif., AVST maintains facilities in
Seattle, Wash. and the United Kingdom and has remote sales offices across
the United States. AVST's Unified Communications solutions are sold and
supported internationally by an extensive network of resellers and OEM
partners. For more information contact Denny Michael, Vice President of
Marketing, at 949-699-2300 or access the company's website at www.avst.com.